Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Year-end stocks outstanding estimated from DOL Employee Benefits Security Administration, Private Pension Plan Bulletin: Abstract of Form 5500 Annual Reports and DOL Form 5500 Direct Filing Entity Bulletin: Abstract of Form 5500 Annual Reports table 12, Defined Benefit, as Assets in interest-bearing cash, where the total stocks outstanding are estimated using DFE Table 2 and Table 12 (Excluding real estate). The share of interest-bearing cash held in money market mutual funds is set equal to the share observed in State and Local Pensions. The stocks outstanding are then adjusted for plans whose fiscal years do not end on December 31 and to include plans with fewer than 100 participants. Data are available with a two-year lag. Series is converted to quarterly and estimated for quarters assuming constant transactions throughout the year. The growth rate of the Milliman 100 Pension Funding Index market value of assets (adjusted for market gains of debt securities) is used to estimate total assets after benchmark years. The unadjusted transactions are the change in stocks outstanding. Data for the most recent ten years show no significant seasonality.